As a very young child I was interested in fire and explosions. I would place one or more `caps' of gunpowder encased in paper on a hot piece of coal on the fire to see how long it would take to blow. I was especially happy when a strip caught fire and the first explosion blew the remaining strip out from the fire, with an occasional airburst as the paper continued to burn. One day my father became so annoyed at this that he held me more close to the fire than was comfortable - he was a police CID officer and had recently attended a fatal fire scene where two children had died and this had affected him. In 1968 or 1969 I decided that I wanted to be a rock blaster, having seen a programme on TV. I enjoyed finding munitions on old WW2 ranges in the 1960s and 1970s. Most were obviously inert but I left alone anything that looked whole ... apart from SAA that I took apart and burned. In the early 1970s I honed my marksmanship skills while rendering safe the percussion caps of the rounds I took apart, by firing my .22 " air rifle at them from about 30 feet away. Even then, when I hit a cap, it and the pellet both came back at me at a rapid speed. I had the bruises on my legs to prove it. In 1969 my brother and I found some disassembled shotgun cartridges on our local playing field and wanted to see how they would behave if placed in a fire. Our father was unimpressed when a percussion cap blew out of one and passed close by his head! We said it must have been a bit of wet wood. In the mid 1970s we had a friend who had more money than sense, who supplied aerosol cans and banger type fireworks. The bangers were interesting for testing out airbursts with an `Action Man' parachute, while an aerosol can placed in a fire on a heap of dirt introduced me to methods of propulsion other than propellant used in SAA. Although I didn't know it then, I was seeing Bernoulli's Theorem in action. By the mid 1970s I was aware that there was a trade of ammunition technician in the army and I was spurred on to become one because I wanted to destroy blind and `stray' ammunition. I joined in 1978 as an apprentice ammo tech, Danger UXB came out later. I was not aware of the programme at that time as my time was taken up with my apprentice studies. I became aware of the programme later and bought a few books about disposal of conventional bombs, so that I might recognise any if I encountered them. I left the army in 1993 but still occasionally go back to my favourite beaches and sometimes find live items that are best left to the police and military disposal staff.